To close out this series, I’m going to address a third driver that IT could use to get management to see the strategic value of omnichannel. I’ve already explained the inherent challenges of getting this outcome, so some creative approaches may be needed. When talking about technology, management may think that multichannel is sufficient, and earlier I also covered that, especially in terms of how omnichannel is an important step forward.

Everything starts with the desire to become more customer-centric, but it may not be that easy for management to see the connection with omnichannel. The two strategic responses from the last two posts should definitely help, and I’ve got one more here to tie things even more closely together.

Strategy #3 --- Omnichannel is about collaboration

Becoming more customer-centric isn’t the only mantra management is embracing these days, and given the focus of my ongoing research, I often see collaboration cited as another strategic priority. This is tied directly to a core business imperative – worker productivity – and being internally-focused, it’s generally viewed independently from issues around customer satisfaction.

Along those lines, this is where Unified Communications enters the conversation, and until recently was only viewed as an internal solution. Collaboration can be defined in many ways, but in this context, the focus is on two things - improving both personal productivity and team-based productivity, with all these workflows being inside the organization.

This alone can be a powerful value proposition for UC, but more recently, businesses are seeing a benefit by integrating UC with the contact center, and the rationale is very much about collaboration. This type of integration can take many forms, but the common thread is doing so with a hosted model. Many service providers – especially OTT players – are now offering combined solutions, which are made possible by the cloud. A premise-based version of this would be much harder to integrate, so the cloud opens up new options, especially around collaboration.

We’ve already addressed how omnichannel is cloud-based, so that fits nicely into this narrative. Earlier, the cloud itself was presented as a strategic driver for omnichannel, and by adding collaboration, the storyline becomes even stronger. Collaboration isn’t normally associated with customer care, but that’s largely due to legacy-based thinking, and that’s precisely what this analysis is trying to move businesses away from. To better understand how collaboration makes omnichannel a more valuable investment for your business, here are two distinct drivers.

Driver #1 - The value of internal collaboration

This is the conventional approach, and directly supports management’s objective to improve workplace productivity. While not all modes of work are collaborative, team work is an essential activity, and requires more demanding communications capabilities than one-to-one interactions for everyday tasks. UC is purpose-built for these needs, especially in terms of supporting real-time communications.

Management wants this, not just so workers have more flexible channels for interacting, but also because UC extends productivity gains to remote workers – especially when hosted. Economics drives most management decisions, and given how the workplace is evolving, remote working is as much about reducing occupancy costs as it is about catering to the workstyle preferences of Millennials. These factors alone should be enough to warrant the move to UC, but to step this up to an omnichannel solution, another driver is needed.

Driver #2 - The value of external collaboration

To clarify, UC in its typical state is built for internal collaboration, much as outlined above. Omnichannel incorporates UC, but with the added focus on agents in the contact center. Existing contact center platforms are very good at supporting multichannel communication – this ground was covered in earlier posts – but cannot support the higher order capabilities of omnichannel, especially around maintaining context as agents switch modes when engaging with customers.

Presuming that the strategies presented in the previous two posts have been internalized, this value driver will be easy to understand. External collaboration takes this a step further, and does so in two ways. First, there is the agent-customer dialog, which on the surface may appear as one-to-one communication. In fact, however, while the agent presents a singular point of contact with the customer, that dialog is often being driven by extensive collaboration behind the scenes. This is the true power of omnichannel, as it makes all of this transparent to the customer.

Secondly, is the internal collaboration that goes on between agents and everyone else involved internally to address inquiries in the moment. This is where the UC element of omnichannel comes into play by seamlessly opening back-channels for internal collaboration that ultimately supports the external collaboration agents are doing with customers. That may be a stretch for how you envision “collaboration”, but with omnichannel, that’s exactly the point.

Conclusion

Part of re-thinking the contact center – and transforming it into customer care – involves re-thinking the concept of collaboration, and if you think this will be hard for IT to grasp, it will be even harder for management. The best way to do that is break things down into manageable pieces, and that’s what I’ve tried to do in this series. As such, the merit of collaboration for internal purposes is clear, but a new layer of value emerges when broadening the scope for external uses.

In that model, there’s a new concentric circle extending to customers, and that drives an entirely new and different set of outcomes. When management recognizes how relevant those outcomes are to their new-found focus on customer care, the value of omnichannel becomes clear. From there, the cloud-based nature of omnichannel also plays into management’s desire to leverage the cloud, and once those ideas are connected, the storyline adds up for all parties concerned – management, agents, IT, and most importantly, your customers.